Brand Story Telling Archives | Telling a Brand Story

This week in inbound marketing we look at Amazon’s incredible success on Prime Day that made history in all categories. Read more on the changes and trends happening in marketing this past month.

Noteworthy Marketing News

Facebook To Begin Testing New ‘Highlights’ Feature That Lets Users Save Stories

Taking a page out of Snapchat’s playbook and making it their own, Facebook has begun testing a new “Highlights” feature that will give users the option to save Stories to their profiles. Unlike Snapchat, Facebook’s feature will allow users to save their Stories beyond the standard 24-hour period a Story exists. Your saved Stories will appear as a horizontal bar on the user’s profile and display view counts as well. Facebook believes this feature will not only give users the opportunity to hold on to their favorite content, but will also “make it easier to express who you are through memories.”

Instagram Testing Open-Ended Questions In Stories To Make Content More Interactive

In an attempt to make content more interactive on their app, Instagram is testing a new feature in which users can add open-ended questions in stories according to a recent write-up on Marketing Land. Instagram currently allows users to post polls with multiple-choice answers, but with this new feature, Instagram is hoping to increase engagement between users, while giving brands the opportunity to have more public conversations with followers.

Snapchat Partners With 4 News Discovery Platforms To Help Push Content Beyond The App

According to an article on Marketing Land, Snapchat has decided to partner with four news discovery platforms (NewsWhip, Tagboard, SAM Desk, and Storyful) used by media organizations to spread their news-related content on a wider scale and basis outside the app. The partnership will allow the four platforms to use Snapchat’s Story Kit Integrations to access and deliver news content posted within the app to thousands of storytellers and newsrooms. Along with Snapchat, the platforms will also be able to access content that is present on the app’s Discovery channels like NBC News and BuzzFeed to name a few.

Improving Your Marketing Program

20 Tips To Improve Your Website Redesign Process

Whether you like it or not, your website is often the first impression your audience gets of your business and your offering, so keeping your website up to date with today’s technological changes in mind is crucial if you want to draw in your target consumer. Our own Nicole Wagner offers an abundance of tips to help you improve your website redesign process.

Today, the majority of marketers and brands recognize the value of implementing a social media strategy when it comes to engaging and connecting with their audience. In an article she wrote, Nicole Wagner presents the best social media practices to get the most out of those popular platforms.

What Is Digital Storytelling: How To Improve Your Efforts

Storytelling plays an important role when it comes to presenting your products or services as a solution, while also helping consumers relate to your business on a deeper level. Similar to storytelling, digital storytelling involves using strategies across all online platforms to communicate your message to your audience. Dan Gartlan offers strategies for how to improve your digital storytelling efforts to build strong relationships with consumers.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Even With All The Glitches, Prime Day 2018 Proves To Be Amazon’s Biggest Sales Day Ever

Amazon has done it again. According to a recent post on Marketing Land, Amazon reported that this year’s Prime Day was the biggest sales day ever surpassing last year’s sales as well as its Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales. Despite the glitches it faced, the company sold over 100 million products, and in the first nine hours gained more Prime members than any other day of the year in Amazon’s history. The products that sold the most worldwide were all Amazon devices—Alexa Voice Remote, the Echo Dot, and the Amazon Fire Stick.

Discover how to improve your brand marketing strategy using Amazon Alexa

How Overstock.com Created A Multipurpose Video Campaign

The digital era we are living in today has made it difficult to distinguish between brand and performance campaigns. For brands with dual goals, a multipurpose campaign might be the answer. In an article published on Think With Google, Overstock.com, the online home goods and furniture retailer, decided to experiment with mixing direct-response strategies with regular brand creative. Interestingly enough, the return on ad spending for the campaign was 3X its other campaigns—the result was enough to make them reconsider how they would normally approach digital video.

Senior living industry leaders attended the Senior Living Innovation Forum, a conference that takes place every June to discuss a variety of topics centered on the senior housing industry. Several attendees shared their insights and concerns about the future of the industry, and recognized that in order to fit in with the current times, companies and investors need to shift their attitudes and accept a new business model if they aspire to create larger market opportunities and increase innovation as well.

Not only has video content become incredibly easy to consume due to the quality of smartphones and tablets, but it’s become much easier — and affordable — to produce as well. Considering the fact that 72 percent of consumers would prefer to learn about products or services via video and that the average consumer watches around 1.5 hours of video a day, your marketing campaign needs to have a video content marketing strategy.

However, your video content will only be effective if it’s of high quality. The following are ten visual storytelling techniques and promotion tips that you should keep in mind:

For more Storytelling techniques, read more here.

Maintain a single POV– Make sure that your video focuses on a single idea or message and that you don’t stray off topic or else you’ll lose the attention of your viewers.
Be human– Use emotion to connect with your audience. A video full of dry facts with no personal point of view isn’t going to be very engaging. Additionally, showcase actual people in your videos so that your viewers have someone to relate to.
Be memorable– If there’s nothing memorable about your video, then it will fail to impress. Viewers are less likely to share video content that hasn’t made much of an impact on them as well, so strive to make content that is memorable in some way.
Be more visual than verbal– Video is a visual medium, so instead of just showing a talking head explaining your message, tell your message in a visual manner. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Start with what’s real – It can be easy to get wrapped up in the visual style of your content, but substance will always trump style. Begin with what’s real and use that as the foundation for your video. The video’s style should be the unique way in which you convey that message to your viewers.
Make it compelling– Remember who your target audience is in order to create video content that they will find relevant and interesting. If you aren’t targeting the right audience, your video content won’t end up being compelling, no matter how well produced it is.
Optimize your videos– Don’t forget to optimize your videos by using strong keywords and links in your titles and descriptions.
Use strong CTAs – Just like written content, video content should have calls-to-action at the end to encourage your viewers to do what you want them to do.
Use YouTube– YouTube has over 1.8 billion monthly users. You can’t ignore an audience that big, so be sure to post your videos on YouTube.
Share your videos – Promote your videos by sharing them on all of your social channels to help attract more viewers.

Using visual storytelling techniques will help audiences connect with your video content and make them more likely to engage. Just remember that all the visual storytelling techniques in the world won’t work if your videos aren’t being watched, which is why promoting your video content is important as well.

Visual Storytelling Techniques That Will Take You To The Next Level

Sign up for our industry insight newsletter